The political chattering classes, who love a good story, are obsessed with the battle for the establishment choice for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination: Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney or throw in a little Chris Christie.

The tragic shooting of a black teenager by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo., has sparked an intense debate about the state of race relations in America, but there's little indication much will change.

In the realm of Republican presidential politics, this has been a good year for Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas. It hasn't been as kind to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush or Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.

Picture the ad, either in the Democratic primaries or from a liberal independent candidate: Hillary Clinton a pro-Wall Street buckraker, a foreign policy interventionist championing George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq and looking like a lukewarm supporter of President Barack Obama.

As the battle intensifies over how much authority President Barack Obama has to take executive measures in the face of congressional inaction, James Madison and Richard Nixon provide the frames of reference.

The Democrats have little say in the agenda of the Republican-run House, and no dispassionate expert predicts the party will win control in the November elections. More likely is a Republican House majority for at least three or four more elections.

Bill Cohen served as an influential three-term U.S. senator, as well as secretary of defense, and is a respected global thinker. He believes his defining political moment was a summer four decades ago.

This Congress is replete with oversight investigations — the murder of U.S. officials in Libya, the misdeeds of the Internal Revenue Service — that have produced lots of headlines and little substantive change.

The stunning defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor by a tea party primary challenger will roil the House for the rest of this session and the next Congress, probably ending the slim hopes for any bipartisan accords on issues such as immigration.

Tim Geithner's valuable career as a civil servant culminated in four high-powered years as Treasury secretary. His recent book about those experiences captures the traumas and tensions of the financial crisis.

Democrats are cautiously optimistic they can hang on to the Senate this year. Surprisingly, this bright forecast is fueled by a sense they'll do better than expected in close contests in the Republican-dominated, Barack Obama-hating South.

President Barack Obama envisioned building a foreign-policy legacy in his second term: a nuclear deal with sanction-strapped Iran, an end to U.S. involvement in conflicts overseas, and a successful pivot to Asia, including a trans-Pacific trade pact.

Here's a bit of good news for nervous Democrats: President Barack Obama's health care law isn't going to be the albatross many feared it would be in this year's congressional elections. Enrollment has soared, and the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the program will cost less than initially projected and that premiums will rise only slightly this year.

Two of the most skilled Republican members of the House of Representatives announced their retirement over the past 10 days. Their departure is unfortunate, but the hand-wringing over term limits for committee chairmen is misplaced.

Two newcomers, Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas, are the hottest figures in the dominant conservative wing of the Republican Party. In markedly different ways, they both claim to be the heirs to the party's contemporary patron saint, Ronald Reagan.

On Friday, the Showtime cable-television channel will air "Geraldine Ferraro: Paving the Way," a documentary about her 1984 race for vice president. Although she was defeated, it was a seminal moment in politics that was validated by the subsequent extraordinary leap in the number of female officeholders.

In today's bitterly polarized environment, the Internal Revenue Service has become even more of a whipping boy for politicians as it struggles with deep budget cuts and accusations of incompetence and, some say, illegal actions.